


The Starry Sky Above Me

by aoife_hime



Category: Magic School Bus
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-10 23:07:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/791237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aoife_hime/pseuds/aoife_hime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim can summarize his thoughts about outer space into five words.  The experiences he has there, though, can never be completely captured by any language.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Starry Sky Above Me

_i. Vast_

It had been pink that morning, delicate and gently blushing against the night, bleaching out the black and leaving the sky nothing but the most brilliantly fresh shade of blue. Other mornings, it was more fierce – a red and orange sphere that boiled up over the horizon and burned away the stars and the moon until there was no trace of either. Those mornings, it almost felt as if a war was being fought and he was only there to observe the fruitless struggle. Fruitless because no matter how valiant and persistent the night, in the end the sun won out and the day began.

But that morning hadn’t begun with a battle cry; instead, it had begun with a sigh. It had begun with a softly creeping breath that worked its fingers into the sky and smoothed away the stars until only the crescent moon was left. It had been peaceful, one moment of change leading seamlessly into the next until it seemed almost impossible to think that it had ever been night at all. And it had been beautiful. How could it be anything less?

Tim supposes that, back home, it’s still that same day. The sun that had so quietly risen that morning still lights up the azure canvas of the sky and blots out any stars that could possibly think to compete with it. It rose without a fuss, without a fight, and will likely set just as graciously. And it will without a doubt be beautiful. But for now it’s still day.

It’s still day and yet he can see stars.

He’s a million miles from home and his vision is filled to the brim with stars. There must be a star for every mile he has traveled – they have traveled, for he doesn’t travel alone, not when his teacher is Ms. Frizzle and her knowledge boils and bursts from her like the light from the militant rising sun – or perhaps there are two? He doesn’t know how many miles they’ve gone, but there are so many stars that Tim can’t quite wrap his head around the number.

So many stars. So much space.

Not so much space, though, that he can escape the same battle that he watches every morning. The sun roils and froths ahead of them, a golden glow expanding across the bus’s windshield. There are sunglasses, thick and heavy and dark, but they only serve to make the light more manageable. It bleaches out the darkness and blots out the other stars in all the rest of space. Millions of miles, millions of stars, and all he can see is one.

He doubts that he will ever be able to watch a sunrise in quite the same way again.

_ii. Austere_

Ralphie is making a joke about aliens again and Tim laughs along with the rest of his classmates. Some of the craters on Mercury are big enough for Carlos to not-so-jokingly attempt to start a game of soccer. Thinking about the type of aliens who could possibly make such a footprint sends Tim’s mind into a fanciful spiral of ever more impossible monsters. He sketches a few instead of taking his usual notes just in case he forgets them later.

He learned almost as soon as he was able to grasp a pencil that inspiration can strike at the oddest of times and it is unwise to ignore it. So he sketches and he laughs when Ralphie makes another joke and does his best to tune out Arnold’s cousin. Janet is a nice girl – if she wasn’t, Arnold wouldn’t put up with her like he does – but her voice is so inescapable that it almost makes him forget just how barren this place is.

Almost. But not quite.

Tim considers himself an artist. He can see the beauty in Mercury’s emptiness. At least, he thinks he can. It’s hard to find beauty in almost nothing, but his mom once got him a book about different art styles and he thinks that Mercury is the perfect example of minimalism. It’s a small planet with little to offer but cliffs and craters, but the horizon stands craggy against the rising sun and something about the shapes and the colors makes Tim glad that there isn’t a planet’s worth of other people to interrupt this moment.

Mercury moves beneath his feet, imperceptible and inevitable, and the sun scorches away inch after inch of the horizon until the crags are flat. Even with his suit, Tim can already feel the heat racing across the deserted landscape so that his scalp prickles with sweat. When Ms. Frizzle calls for everyone to return to the bus, it’s not a moment too soon.

They’ve wandered a bit far afield with all of their explorations and bus is parked a little ways off by now. On Earth, Tim would have been worried about how long the walk back would take, but distances seem smaller when one can cross them by leaping through the emptiness rather than walking.

_iii. Forbidding_

If there is one lesson that is being made more and more clear as this particular field trip goes on, it is that the solar system is a beautiful place. Beautiful and very, very deadly.

Every rose has its thorns, after all.

The clouds on Venus swirl low in the sky, a roiling storm that refuses to break. Tim watches them for a full two minutes. He doesn’t even realize he has gotten lost in their patterns and shifting hues until Wanda makes a comment about rain and Ms. Frizzle answers that any rain that might fall would be acid.

Acid is quite a thorn to go along with those fascinating clouds.

Tim lets his imagination go into overdrive. It’s not that hard to do – he’s on Venus and he’s watching the most inspiring clouds he’s ever seen in his life – and it’s not long before he can almost smell the burn of his suit as it is eaten away by falling acid even though the clouds do nothing more than writhe as they have since the bus landed. The thought crosses his mind that perhaps he should have stayed on the bus with his sketchbook, but quickly dismisses it. It would be safer, and he is glad that he left his paper and pencil somewhere where they won’t burn away from an unexpected splash of acid, but he doesn’t think he could ever not regret setting foot on such a forbiddingly inspiring planet.

He feels certain that these clouds will haunt his drawings and his dreams for years to come.

_iv. Bewitching_

Tim is used to Jupiter being the size of his fist, perhaps, or maybe a golf ball. In their classroom model, it was much larger, but it was still small enough to fit on top of his desk while he was painting it. Jupiter always seemed large in comparison to the other dots in his textbooks that represented Earth and Mars and Venus, but ultimately the drawing had to fit inside a book and the ordinary people who printed his textbooks tended to make them an ordinary size so that they could easily fit into ordinary desks and ordinary backpacks.

He watches the stormy red clouds swirl as the bus draws nearer. The spot is magnificent and Tim is suddenly struck by how insignificantly small he is. After all, what is he? A boy, young enough that the art teacher at the community college lets him get away with sneaking into night classes when his mom is her business lecture. Just a boy, hardly different from any other. He is different, though. Ms. Frizzle has made him different.

With an artist’s eye, his gaze shifts between the window and his sketchpad, picking out every detail he only wishes he could better include. He sketches furiously and soon he forgets to feel awed and is simply fascinated. Jupiter sits suspended in space, an implacable giant, beautiful in its majesty. It deserves so much more than a pencil-drawn tribute by a boy, but that is all he has at his disposal so it will have to do.

Perhaps someday, once they have found Ms. Frizzle and made it safely back to Earth, they could consider coming back for another field trip.

The moment is disturbed when Janet sends the bus into a dive straight towards the planet’s surface. Tim’s pencil slides harshly off the side of the paper, leaving an ugly gash of graphite where there should have been clouds. Even through the bus, he can feel the gravity increase and even if he wanted to help pull the bus out of its nosedive, Tim finds himself uncomfortably pressed into his seat. Even his lungs feel heavy and Janet must be some sort of hyper-competitive alien to be able to scamper to the back of the bus that quickly.

Annoyed, he looks out the window while Ralphie pulls them out of a dive. All he sees is red. Fierce, swirling, deadly, impossible red.

His breath stops for a moment. It could be the gravity, or it could be something else.

Okay, maybe this was worth it.

_v. Sublime_

Pluto reminds Tim very much of Mercury, save that Pluto’s surface is entirely more icy and cold than Mercury’s could ever be. But it’s small and the gravity is low and that’s what really matters. His stomach feels like it is doing flips of its own as he leaps with his class in their search for their missing teacher.

They find her, telescope all set up and pleased smile on her face. She knew they’d find her, and in some small part of the back of his mind Tim realizes that he believed they’d find her all along too. She bends over once more and puts her eye to the telescope even as his classmates eagerly rush to her side. Everybody wants answers, but Ms. Frizzle has more left to teach them.

Tim stores his questions for another time and gazes in the direction the telescope is facing. His classmates do the same.

“That, class,” she begins, “is the sun.”

It’s small. It’s bright, but not nearly so bright that it casts any real light on the landscape. From here, it looks like just another star.

And there are so very many stars.

Tim thinks of all of the miles he has traveled today. He thinks of the sun burning up the bus’s windshield and all of the planets that orbit it. He thinks of how something as large as Jupiter is able to hurtle through space in its unrelenting journey and how insignificant he feels in comparison. He thinks of his mother and secret art classes and sketching on Venus and how very cold it must be on Pluto if his fingers are starting to tingle with numbness despite his Frizzle-ized spacesuit. Tim thinks of all of these things as he watches the glowing orbs in the sky. Perhaps this wasn’t what Ms. Frizzle had in mind when she took them on a field trip to space. Perhaps he should wait until he is older to have these thoughts.

He can’t wait, though. He is on the frozen surface of Pluto and the stars are twinkling through what little atmosphere the planet has. Tim feels inspired to think, inspired to draw, inspired to…

To be. He feels inspired to be. 

So he does. For one eternal moment, he breaths the stored air in his space suit, tunes out Dorothy Ann’s observations and Carlos’s puns, and just is. There’s a word for what he’s feeling now, Tim is sure of it; he just hasn’t read enough yet to know what that word is yet. Old people, people from long ago who believed that art was something more than art and science was more than mere curiosity, those people would have the right word. When they get back to school, Tim is going to find that word that describes how he feels at this very moment.

Then Janet shows up with too many rocks from too many impossible places. Arnold takes his helmet off. Tim’s moment is over and everyone including Tim is too preoccupied with saving their friend to say goodbye to Pluto.

That night after his surreptitious art class, Tim lies awake in bed. The stars are out tonight, but the city lights glow on the horizon and it makes it almost impossible to make out any but the brightest. It’s disappointing. Still, there are a few to be seen and Tim focuses on them, their brightness twinkling against the imperfect darkness of the evening. 

He searches inside for the feeling he had, but his sheets are too familiar and his pajamas too comfortable. He’s not going to find it tonight, he realizes, and the sadness that comes upon him at that moment is shocking in its intensity. It’s a loss, not being able to grasp that feeling, even though before that day he’d never felt such a thing.

Sleep is slow to come, but come it does. Tim dreams and in the morning he draws his dreams: loud aliens who stole rocks from planets with deadly eddies of red and yellow clouds. The sadness from the night is still there, but it has dulled. He probably won’t feel that special feeling again for a long time, he has realized, but that doesn’t mean he should stop trying to find it altogether.

Besides, maybe he’ll get lucky. After all, it might be a field trip day.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a birthday present for Z who requested a fic about what Tim thinks about space. For an eight year old, Tim has a lot of thoughts, but then again he always struck me as an old soul and a deep thinker.


End file.
